We do 6 posts a day at DWT-- 7 days a week. I've been trying to ween myself off that iron-clad schedule. There's no real need for it. But it's been hard for me to change. The most absurd example was when I was living at City of Hope a few years ago, L.A.'s gigantic cancer hospital. I was finished with chemo and had to have a complete stem cell replacement. I recall laying in bed with an industrial sized pipe pumping my stem cells out of one side of my body and another industrial sized pipe pumping new stem cells (clones of my old ones) into the other side of my body. I was surrounded by doctors and nurses. And I was calming blogging away on my laptop.
Today I have a routine appointment at the City of Hope campus-- an evusheld booster treatment. No biggie... except that I have to drive all the way there, go through the check-in process at the campus, sit around in the hospital, get the two injections and then wait around for an hour so they can see if I have an adverse reaction. Could I do the 6 posts today? Sure... if I stress myself out. But... maybe today is the day to break that cycle. I never even missed a post when I was wandering around in the Malian Sahara with a bunch of Tuareg traders.
I have a feeling if I were getting my treatment at Mykolaiv's oncology hospital, instead of on the Duarte City of Hope campus, I would have a different dynamic playing out today-- the importance of getting out the news that Russia is continuing to shell hospitals and the danger of being in a cancer hospital that Russian shells are raining down on. "The hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko, said several hundred patients were in the hospital during the attack but that no one was killed. The assault damaged the building and blew out windows. Russian forces have stepped up their attacks on Mykolaiv, located 470 kilometers (292 miles) south of Kyiv, in an attempt to encircle the city. Ukrainian and Western officials earlier accused Russia of shelling a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol on Wednesday. Three people died in that attack."
The latest YouGov poll for The Economist asked if 9 countries in the news are friends or foes. These are the results among registered voters (in alphabetical order):
Afghanistan
Friend- 12%
Foe- 74%
Belarus
Friend- 21%
Foe- 46%
China
Friend- 13%
Foe- 76%
Germany
Friend- 77%
Foe- 11%
Guatemala
Friend- 46%
Foe- 20%
Poland
Friend- 81%
Foe- 5%
Russia
Friend- 6%
Foe- 87%
Syria
Friend- 11%
Foe- 67%
Ukraine
Friend- 81%
Foe- 9% (among Republicans, this number rises slightly to 11%)
Nate Cohn noted this morning that according to YouGov polling, "In recent years, American attitudes toward Ukraine have shifted more than toward any other country. When the poll tested U.S. attitudes on Ukraine in September 2019, 36 percent of registered voters were not sure whether Ukraine was friendly or unfriendly. That’s a higher share than for nearly any of the other thousands of instances when YouGov asked voters what they thought about a country over the last five years. Only 41 percent called the nation friendly or an ally. Now, only 10 percent aren’t sure whether Ukraine is friendly, a lower tally than for almost any other country. Nearly 70 percent of Americans now consider Russia an enemy, more than for any other country in the survey, including North Korea and Iran." He pointed out that the 81% of Americans who say Ukraine is either friendly or an ally is a figure "that rivals or even exceeds that of many longtime U.S. allies like France or Japan. Only Britain, Canada and Australia earned more favorable ratings from voters."